China dominates the world market for antibiotics…. but… .. surprise
Global exports of antibiotics come predominantly from China, as Statista's Martin Armstrong shows in the infographic below , based on data from the International Trade Center (ITC). This makes Beijing somehow control world health, but if you look at the graph you will have a surprise …
China currently accounts for 42.4% of global antibiotic exports by value. Italy, India and Switzerland follow at a distance. Italy is the second largest producer of antibiotics in the world and even precedes the giant India.
For years, experts have been warning about the EU's dependence on antibiotic supplies from abroad, particularly from China and India. Because in Europe only we are seriously involved in this sector.
Dependence on imported medicines and active ingredients is not limited only to antibiotics, but has also been a concern – again for many years – in a wide range of pharmaceutical products, including, for example, cortisone.
Furthermore, the world is facing another increasingly significant problem: More and more bacteria are developing resistance to common antibiotics.
Consequently, there is now an urgent need for drugs that are specifically effective against resistant germs. Most classes of antibiotics introduced in the 21st century serve just this purpose. However, research on these active ingredients is often unprofitable and risky for the industry, because drugs that act specifically against resistant germs are not used in a generalized way, but only as so-called "second line" or "last line" antibiotics. line ”(reserve antibiotics), as a last resort when established drugs are no longer effective.
So we should invest both in new antibiotics and in domestic production, but few are doing it.
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The article China dominates the world market for antibiotics…. but… .. surprise comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-cina-domina-il-mercato-mondiale-degli-antibiotici-ma-sorpresa/ on Sat, 09 Jul 2022 07:00:07 +0000.